|
Fringe 2007 Reviews (88)
Hugh Hughes in…Floating
Hoipolloi/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Pleasance Courtyard
****
Last year's award-winning show is back, after a sell-out New York run
and showcased in Edinburgh this year by the British Arts Council. It
brilliantly spins a surreal tale of the day the Isle of Anglesey broke
away from the mainland and set sail on the Atlantic.
Hugh Hughes' fresh-faced fascination with the minutia of life and his
compulsion to linger over every last detail of a story is delightful.
Fabulously low-tech 'multi-media performance art' is madly woven into
the plot and the audience are encouraged to get thoroughly involved
via a whole series of random props which get passed around from person
to person.
This is a magical, utterly endearing and insanely genius hour and ten
minutes of theatre.
Allison Vale
5 Beats to the Bar
HANA/PBH's Free Fringe
The Outhouse
***
Learning English isn't easy, and is probably even less so when you
try to improve it using Shakespearian pentameter. Such is the one hour's
traffic of Yina Li's play 5 Beats to the Bar, which shows the
struggle of a young Taiwanese woman to adapt to life in Britain with
her English husband.
She winds up in this predicament when their fraying relationship is
noticed by her over-zealous neighbours, who lend her a variety of the
Bard's plays on DVD; only for havoc to break loose.
A premise like this one could easily have fallen prey to a variety
of problems, but the production was a pleasure to watch. The action
moves between the modern-day household of Gee-Hare and her husband Will,
and the idealised Shakespeare which is enacted around her by the cast,
in a frightening mixture of dance and horror which quite capably shows
her confusion and horror at the shocking events and complex language
used. Unfortunately the play loses itself slightly near the close, as
Gee-Hare begins to communicate in quotation; what follows comes in a
quite abstract way and the ending is left somewhat unclear.
However the cast are all good performers, who flit between the Shakespeare
and the modern dialogue seamlessly, and manage to bring an affection
to the production which is quite endearing.
Graeme Strachan
The Line Between
Thirdman Theatre Company
Gilded Balloon Teviot
**(*)
Piecing together a coherent narrative out of clown play and mime is
rather more difficult than a more standard play, which no doubt is why
it is used largely as a tonal device in this play.
Two men are suffering from some form of agoraphobic depression and
are almost unable to function. Their mixed emotions and their attempts
to break free from the bleakness of the situation are shown through
changes in lighting, costume changes and the use of red clown-noses,
all implemented in the displays of time passing and their changes in
attitude.
There is a lot of potential in this production, and despite a lot of
hard work on the part of the cast the idea never really comes off properly.
The physical comedy is certainly well accomplished and there are laughs
to be had, but the story itself feels fragmented, almost as if it were
an afterthought to the choreography.
Graeme Strachan
Next
page - - - Index
|
